“Dinner
is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the
evening.”
---Art Buchwald
---Art Buchwald
LUCILLE’S
SMOKEHOUSE BAR-B-QUE - (VALENCIA, CA)
Westfield
Valencia Town Center
24201
West Valencia Boulevard
Valencia,
CA 91355
661-255-1227
11:00
AM to 12:00 AM
The first physical impression of the Lucille’s Smokehouse
Bar-B-Que in Valencia is that it is a restaurant in search of an identity. It absolutely defies being labeled with any
decorating style. This sizable, shopping
mall location seems to give a nod to the Arts and Crafts style on the outside,
but the waiting area appears to be restaurant designer roadhouse, except that
the hostess’s desk seems on cusp between Deco and Moderne. Walk past that and it’s anyone’s guess.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, just a little odd the first
time you walk in. The bar is sort of
Mid-Century modern steakhouse style with faux alligator hide panels on the face
of bar cabinet. Above the bar floats a
phalanx of flat screen TVs which were all tuned to the same dramatic show when
we entered a bit before 5:00 PM, but on the hour, the manager walked around the
bar with a remote and tuned each to a different sports channel starting the
usual visual deluge of silent talking heads interspersed with game clips.
The area where we were seated was a double row of booths
projecting into the middle of the room from behind the hostess’s station
towards the kitchen. The seats in these
booths were upholstered with purple faux snakeskin while the tables were 50s
coffee shop style red Formica with aluminum banding around the edges. The rest of the seating in the room seemed
covered with various colors of Naugahyde giving it all a decidedly 50s casual
dining feeling. The wall decoration of
the area past the bar looked like a trendy blues club. This was with good reason since they have
live performances there on weekends. The
wall decoration on the other side of the room looked like an upscale country
chicken restaurant. In the center of the
room, along the back wall beside the kitchen entrance, was the smoker proudly
enshrined in a floor to ceiling glass box.
A sign by the door of the box announces how many hours the different
types of meat stay in the smoker. The
semi-open kitchen area was easily differentiated from the rest of the room by being
faced with white tile. To top this all
off, the ceiling structure and all the HVAC ducts and wiring is concealed by sun
sails and pergolas as though you were sitting outside on a vast patio. As I said, it’s fun, and all this visual
interest does not detract from the barbecue experience.
The hostess seated us, gave us our menus, our setups
(wrapped in real cloth napkins), and our menus.
Since our habit of ordering our sampling of the que has become a habit
we were able to make our decisions and give our server, Audrey, our complete
order even though her arrival was quite prompt.
We ordered appetizers, a half order of Fried Dill Pickles and a half
order of Fried Green Tomatoes. Sharon
ordered a Back Porch: a Rib, half a Chicken and Tri-tip platter with Baby Back
Ribs. Macaroni & Cheese and Baked
Beans were her two sides. My order was a
BBQ Two Meat Combo Platter with BBQ Beef Ribs and Pulled Pork. My two sides were Southern Braised Greens and
Honey Roasted Peanut Slaw. I also
ordered an a la carte hot link, actually two, to get a more complete sampling. While we were waiting for our order, Audrey
brought our drinks, served in large, wide mouth Mason jars, and a basket with
two “homemade biscuits” and a more than adequate serving of honey butter.
Homemade Biscuits
If “homemade” means made from scratch, in-house, then
these seem to qualify. They were firm
textured, not flakey, a bit dry but tasty and oddly, but not unpleasantly, had
a dusting of granulated sugar. They were definitely not purchased from a commercial
bakery. They came with honey butter to
compete the chain restaurant take on Southern style biscuits.
Fried Dill Pickles
If you have never tried this and you like pickles you are
missing something. At other barbecue
places that serve this the pickles are usually sliced and panko breaded. In this presentation they started with very
crisp pickles, sliced into spears, and breaded with a more traditional,
Southern, corn based breading. You want
them hot, but be careful with them right after they come from the kitchen since
the breading seals in a lot of the juice.
They were presented with two dipping sauces – one a ranch dressing and
the other a mustard based dip on a plate decorated with shredded carrots, red,
white and green cabbage. Very festive and
a genuinely fun appetizer!
Fried Green Tomatoes
Sharon had never experienced this Southern tradition
before. Green tomatoes are firmer than
ripe tomatoes and not quite as sweet.
After breading with the same breading used on the pickles and frying
they have just the right acidic sweetness to perk up your taste buds for the
que. These are served in a plate coated
with a peppery sauce that was a bit too much for Sharon so she could only eat
the slice in the middle that had not touched the sauce.
Macaroni & Cheese
A conventional, but very good presentation of mac and
cheese, al dente pasta with a creamy white cheddar sauce with some shredded yellow
cheddar melted on top. If you have any
leftover it’s worth taking home and nuking for a snack.
Southern Braised Greens
This is another presentation of greens that anyone who
says that they do not like greens should try.
I put them in the conventional greens category in spite of being done in
a broth. They have chunks of apple wood
smoked bacon (smoked here in the smoker) and have a rich, tangy flavor. This is another one that qualifies as “great
greens.”
BBQ Beans
This is another dish that uses chunks of the in-house
smoked bacon. (They slice it thin for
the burgers and into chunks to cook other dishes.) The beans are firm and the sauce is sweet,
and peppery, unfortunately just a little too peppery for Sharon, but most people
will find them better beans. While not BBQ
bean dish that you might want to make a meal of, they are a superior side dish. Damn good beans!
Honey Roasted Peanut Slaw
Everything was here, different types of cabbage, carrots,
green onions, spices, vinegar based dressing, and not too wet. It should have been perfect…what happened?
From the taste of the other dishes the kitchen is not afraid of spices, but
here the dressing was, well…a bit timid.
Salt and pepper brought it up to really good, but not great. I guess that this is one of those things that
really needs to age a bit for the flavor to develop because I had it the next
day on a pulled pork sandwich, for lunch, and it was just right. I also had it for dinner with the leftover
link and it was not overwhelmed by the link.
As served I’d call this a very near miss.
Hot Link
While I doubt that they make the links here they are
probably custom made for Lucille’s. The
link was very meaty, moist, had a good “pop” when sliced and had absolutely no
mealy taste at all. The spicing was
full, though not overly hot, and with no noticeable after bite. Of course, it was too hot for Sharon, but I
found it exceptional. The a la carte
serving is two links and I took the other one home where it definitely passed
the leftover test the following evening.
Tri-tip
All the meat here, except for the bacon, is smoked using
hickory. This gives the tri-tip a
somewhat more subtle flavor than the usual California red oak, but it is still
intense. It looked perfect, with a
proper smoke ring, and the flavor was top notch. It may seem that I’m reaching for something
to knock, but this otherwise near perfect tri-tip was just a bit too dry for
me.
BBQ Chicken
Now this chicken was actually smoked. This was simply barbecued chicken done
right. Juicy and flavorful. There is really not much more to say, just
enjoy it.
BBQ Beef Ribs
They were large and meaty, and had a very good looking
glaze on them. Unfortunately, the glaze
was a bit hard, which made the ribs more than a bit chewy. They were not stringy and the flavor screamed
“BEEF!” but they were tough enough that by the time I finished chewing the meat
of one particularly large rib my jaw muscles ached.
Baby Back Ribs
These were meaty, well, though subtly smoked and had a
bit of a glaze on them. While not
fall-off-the-bone tender they were not at all tough. Baby back ribs should not disappoint and
these certainly did not.
Pulled Pork
Pulled pork should be moist, tender and flavorful, and
this was. As with most pulled pork it
can be overwhelmed by the intense flavor of beef ribs and I normally would not
have ordered them together. I took the
leftover home to make a pulled pork sandwich for lunch the next day and if mine
is any indicator I would not hesitate to order one at Lucille’s. My only problem with this is that it was the
only thing on the plate that came out from the kitchen a bit cold.
After dinner, when our server brought us real hot, wet
towels, not packaged wet naps, to clean up with, we could not resist ordering a
dessert. We ordered a small Banana
Pudding. This came in a small oval dish
like the one that served the Macaroni & Cheese. At one end was a dollop of whipped cream with
two ‘nilla wafers and a mint sprig stuck in it.
The pudding did not have pudding like texture but was more like a banana
flavored whipped topping, and while there was a layer of crunchy ‘nilla wafers
on the bottom, there were, disappointingly enough, no slices of banana in the
pudding. I’ve had some interesting
variations on the idea of banana pudding, but this isn’t one of them.
Taken as a whole, the experience was good and we left feeling
as though we had enjoyed a good meal.
The few negatives were far outweighed by the positives. We have been to another Lucille’s location
with the same overall impression. You
really have to appreciate how much effort chains like this make to keep the
experience and the que at a consistently good level. Hiring and retaining bright, perky and
accommodating workers like the server we had that night goes a long way toward
that. We’ve been in food service and we
know what it takes. We give them a
qualified nine, and Lucille’s, in Valencia, will probably get more of our business
than Famous Dave’s, in Palmdale, simply because it is thirty miles closer.
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